Thursday, August 16, 2012

How Two-Arm Daily Became One-Arm Daily

Very few people are acquainted with the way in which Hugh Daly, the famous on-armed pitcher of the Chicago Unions, lost his arm. He was employed in the Front Street Theater, in Baltimore, and one night, while mixing up some red fire and other fancy lights to be used in a spectacular play, there was a terrible explosion, and poor Hughey was knocked senseless. When he regained consciousness his left hand and forearm were a shapeless mass. It was injured so badly that amputation was necessary.

-St. Louis Globe-Democrat, August 25, 1884

As soon as I read this, I was certain that the story wasn't true. According to his bio in Major League Baseball Profiles, 1871-1900, Volume 2, at the age age of thirteen, Daily "was reportedly shot through the left wrist with a loaded musket in backstage horseplay at Baltimore's Front Street Theater...Daily ever after that was in effect one-handed..." I always make the joke that One-Arm Daily actually had two arms and I'm pretty darn sure that there was no amputation. To the best of my knowledge, he had two arms and two hands but the one hand didn't work after the accident. A better joke, made in Profiles, is that Daily's true handicap was his temper.

I think that sounds about right. Although, regardless of the similarity of their disabilities, I've never linked Abbott, who always seemed to be a decent human being, with Daily, who was pretty much a jerk.

This blog is no more. It has ceased to be. It's expired and gone to meet its maker. It's a stiff. Bereft of life. It rests in peace. Its metabolic processes are now history. It's kicked the bucket. It's shuffled off this mortal coil, run down the curtain, and joined the bleedin' choir eternal. This is an ex-blog.

Welcome To TGOG

The goal of this blog is to tell the story of the history of 19th century St. Louis baseball and to serve as a resource for 19th century baseball researchers. It is, essentially, an online research journal. If you have any comments, criticisms or suggestions, feel free to contact me at thisgameofgames@gmail.com.

The research is, as always, ongoing.

"Baseball is the very symbol, the outward and visible expression of the drive and push and rush and struggle of the raging, tearing, booming nineteenth century." Mark Twain, 1889.